The television broadcast news industry has evolved from communicating information within the newsroom with paper and teletype formats to using computer-based information transfer systems that transfer electronic documents. Currently, specialized computer systems assist in news production, promotion, and distribution of electronic documents to allow newsroom personnel to perform their functions more efficiently. These specialized computer systems can also store a wide variety of news media such as text, images, and broadcast video for distribution within the newsroom and for transmission to external destinations.
In a busy and high pressure newsroom environment, it can be critical that the producers, directors, anchor people and technical staff have quick and easy access to the news stories which are to be presented on a typical broadcast, as well as the information regarding the structure of the broadcast and the lineup and timing of the broadcast. In the past, while this information was available on a computer network, the conventional display of such information tended to be cluttered, and difficult to access and manage. Typically, information regarding the directory of data files would be in one window on the display screen, information regarding a queue of the stories to be run would be in a separate window and the actual text for the stories would be in a third window. Switching back and forth between windows in order to coordinate the broadcast and edit fields within the windows in these systems could be slow, was generally not intuitive, and could result in broadcast errors.